open source News - Page 77 of 108 - CNX Software

March 12, 2017March 23, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 22 Comments

How to Control Your Air Conditioner with Raspberry Pi Board and ANAVI Infrared pHAT

Leon ANAVI may be a full-time software engineer, but in his spare time he has started to develop open source hardware project with the help of others and by himself. Last year, I got hold of his RabbitMax Flex HAT for Raspberry Pi, and tested it with the provided LCD display, one temperature sensor, and a Raspberry Pi 2 board. The board also featured IR receiver & transmitter, and I tried to use it with my aircon remote control, but at the time I did not find a way to do it easily, and control my TV with LIRC instead. Leon has now made a simpler, smaller, and cheaper add-on board for Raspberry Pi Zero, and other Raspberry Pi boards with a 40-pin header, with 3x I2C headers, two IR transmitters, and one IR receiver. He sent me a sample of “ANAVI Infrared pHAT”, and after quickly describing the board, […]

March 10, 2017March 10, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 12 Comments

Macchina M2 is an Open Source Hardware OBD-II Development Platform for Your Car (Crowdfunding)

ODB-II Bluetooth adapter and head-up displays to monitor and diagnose your car have been around for a while. I actually got two models to use with a Toyota Avanza and Torque Lite app, but never managed to make it work with my phone. Macchina M2 board is doing much of the same thing and more, as it is open source hardware, and supports more communications protocols including GPS, WiFi, 3G/LTE, BLE, and Ethernet using XBEE boards. Macchina M2 specifications: MCU – Atmel SAM3X8E ARM Cortex M3 processor @ 84 MHz (also used on Arduino DUE) with 96 KB SRAM, 512KB flash Storage – micro SD card socket, 32KB EEPROM via I2C USB – 1x micro USB port (USB device or host mode) Wireless XBee Socket – For Bluetooth LE, WiFi, GSM, 3G, LTE, I/Os 6x automotive level I/O pins to control 12V devices (Examples: relays, fans, lights, etc) OR act […]

March 8, 2017March 8, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

Need to Program Many ESP8266 Modules? This Wemos D1 mini based Pogo Jig Programming Board Could Be Useful

If you have many ESP8266 modules to flash with your own firmware this may be time-consuming, but Wing Tang Wong’s ESP8266 Pogo Jig Programming Board could greatly streamline the process, as it just hold ESP-12F module in place using pogopins, so you can go through boards quite quickly. You’ll just need to a Wemos D1 mini board without ESP-12F module to the programming board, and then place your ESP-12F module (or compatible) between the pogopin to program it through Wemos D1 mini’s micro USB port. The board is not for sale (yet?), but the EAGLE design files can be found on Github, and it should not be difficult to find a company to manufacture a few if you need it. Via OSH Park’s Blog. Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily […]

March 6, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 30 Comments

Mainline Linux on 64-bit ARM Amlogic SoCs, and TV Boxes such as Wetek Hub / Player 2, NEXBOX A1 / A95X, etc…

We’ve already seen Neil Armstrong, part of BayLibre, worked on adding Amlogic SoC (S905/S905X/S912) to mainline Linux via our virtual schedule for the Embedded Linux Conference & OpenIoT Summit 2017. But at the time, although we could see some activity in Linux 4.10 including support for Nexbox A95X and Nexbox A1, they did provide that much details the work that had been done, but since then, ELC 2017 videos have been released, and BayLibre wrote a short post about 3D Graphics support in mainline Linux. We can see that I/Os, USB host, composite video output, Ethernet, eMMC/SDIO, and PSCI and SCPI features have already been added to Linux 4.10. but some important features have not yet including HDMI, Mali support, Audio, and high speed eMMC modes. HDMI is actually planned for Linux 4.12, which could be released in about 18 weeks if we keep the 10 weeks kernel release schedule […]

February 7, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Open Surgery Initiative Aims to Build DIY Surgical Robots

Medical equipments can be really expensive because of the R&D involved and resulting patents, low manufacturing volume, government regulations, and so on. Developed countries can normally afford those higher costs, but for many it may just be prohibitively expensive. The Open Surgery initiative aims to mitigate the costs by “investigating whether building DIY surgical robots, outside the scope of healthcare regulations, could plausibly provide an accessible alternative to the costly professional healthcare services worldwide”. The project is composed of member from the medical, software, hardware, and 3D printing communities, is not intended for (commercial) application, and currently serves only academic purposes. Commercial surgical robots can cost up to $2,000,000, but brings benefits like smaller incisions, reduced risks of complications and readmissions, and shorter hospital stays thanks to a faster recovery process. There have already been several attempts within the robotics community to come up with cheaper and more portable surgical […]

February 2, 2017May 29, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 21 Comments

Olimex Teres I A64 DIY Open Source Hardware Laptop Kit Design Complete, To Sell for 225 Euros

Olimex has been working on an open source hardware Olimex A64 laptop for a little over a year, and the company has now complete thed hardware design of their TERES I laptop, and are working on finalizing the software design before accepting orders for 225 Euros for TERES-A64-BLACK and TERES-A64-WHITE models. As explained in the instructions manual, Olimex laptop will not be sold assembled, but as a kit to let the users assemble the following parts themselves: TERES-006-Keyboard QWERTY keyboard TERES-023-Touch touchpad with TERES-022-Touch-Cover and TERES-010-Touch-Btns TERES-014-Screw-Set with 42 pieces of different kind of screws. TERES-PCB3-Touch PCB TERES-PCB2-IO PCB with headphone jack, micro SD slot, and a USB port TERES-PCB4-Btn PCB for the power button together with TERES-009-Pwr-Btn plastic and TERES-013-LED-pipe TERES-PCB1-A64 motherboard based on Allwinner A64 processor. TERES-PCB5-KEYBOARD keyboard control board Display parts: TERES-008-LCD-Back, TERES-016-Hinge-Set, TERES-007-LCD-Frame, and TERES-015-LCD 11.6″ LCD panel TERES-019-Camera & TERES-020-Camera-Lens for the webcam Speakers, battery,WiFi […]

February 1, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 8 Comments

$79 Digilent OpenScope Open Source Multi-function Programmable Instrument Works over USB and WiFi (Crowdfunding)

Digilent OpenScope is an open source, portable, multi-function programmable instrument used for capturing, visualizing, and controlling analog and digital signals, that works with your smartphone or computer over USB or WiFi, and it can also be used in standalone mode as a development board, like you would use an Arduino or Raspberry Pi board. OpenScope MZ key features and specifications: MCU – Microchip PIC32 MZ (MZ2048EFG124) MIPS Warrior M-class micro-controller @ up to 200 MHz with 2048KB flash, 512 KB RAM External Storage – micro SD slot Wireless Connectivity – WiFi module USB – 1x micro USB for power and programming over FTDI Programming / Debugging – micro USB port, programming header Expansion – 30-pin Fly Wire connector with: 2x scope channels with 12 bits @ 2 MHz bandwidth and up to 6.25MS/s sampling rate 1x function generator output with 1 MHz bandwidth and up to 10MS/s update rate 10x […]

January 31, 2017January 31, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

FOSDEM 2017 Open Source Meeting Schedule

FOSDEM (Free and Open Source Software Developers’ European Meeting) is a 2-day free event for software developers to meet, share ideas and collaborate that happens on the first week-end of February, meaning it will take place on February 4 & 5, 2017 this year. FOSDEM 2017 will features 608 speakers, 653 events, and 54 tracks, with 6 main tracks namely: Architectures, Building, Cloud, Documentation, Miscellaneous, and Security & Encryption. I won’t be there, but it’s always interesting to look at the schedule, and I made my own virtual schedule focusing especially on talks from “Embedded, mobile and automotive” and “Internet of Things” devrooms. Saturday 4, 2017 11:00 – 11:25 – Does your coffee machine speaks Bocce; Teach your IoT thing to speak Modbus and it will not stop talking, by Yaacov Zamir There are many IoT dashboards out on the web, most will require network connection to a server far […]